Latest News | News Break Nigeria Despite the deluge of complaints from various quarters about leadership deficit in the country and the challenging environment under which businesses manage to operate, Oludolapo Ibukun Akinkugbe, founding chairman, FrieslandCampina WAMCO Nigeria Plc, in this interview with ZEBULON AGOMUO, Deputy Editor, says he will never lose hope on Nigeria. He advises the youth to believe in themselves in order to surmount the problem of unemployment. The entrepreneur also speaks on the negative impacts of policy inconsistency by government and on the continued detention of the 219 Chibok school girls by the Boko Haram sect. Excerpts: One major problem in the country is high level of unemployment; how can government intervene in this area? There are number of initiatives they have put in place, for instance, assisting in soft loans and all that; government should also improve in the area of vocational education where people can acquire skills, because today we do not have people who can work very well as plumbers, electricians. Most of those who work in those areas do not have basic scientific qualifications to be able to do them better. We just have to correct these things. Oludolapo Ibukun Akinkugbe, It has been identified that leadership is the major problem of this country, how can we get it right? It is a problem, but leadership comes from the bottom and if the bottom itself is not strong, if it is faulty, you don’t expect to have strong leadership. And part of the problem is that we have not spent enough time to give the children the right type of education to be able to challenge them when they grow older. The way things are going in the country; do you think there’s hope, particularly economy wise? Well, I never lose hope on this country. It is difficult, but it can still be done. When you are running you don’t continue to look back because it pulls you down. That is one of the problems we have in this country. If you focus your attention on the goal post, you are likely to achieve success that when you are looking back. Looking back means trying to know what other people are thinking, doing or saying and all that. But the essential thing is for you to focus on your goal and you’ll make it. Some people believe that our diversity as Nigerians has not been a blessing, but a curse, whereas it is said that there is strength in diversity; what is your take on this? What a lot of people complain about is that we are losing that strength because we are looking at that diversity in the negative way. If properly harnessed, it can be strength to the country. When I started working, we never used to ask question about where you come from, because there was only one single service and there were quite many people who grew up in Lagos and nobody asked them where they came from. We moved together, everyone bringing his own culture to play and we all enjoyed ourselves regardless of where we came from. But today, it is so sad that because of politics, people are now leaning on their religion, places of origin trying to exploit them to be able to get certain advantage, but all those things didn’t use to matter. How friendly is Nigerian environment to businesses? It is difficult, quite difficult and challenging. However, business is always difficult everywhere, but in Nigeria it is probably more difficult because we haven’t put in place the friendly type of environment for things to work well. As a businessman who has been involved in supplies, manufacturing and many more; what are some of the challenges you have encountered? Operating in our kind of environment has numerous challenges. Some of them come in the form of sourcing of products to sell; if you are located far from source of supply. One has to be careful with planning so that one will not run out of stocks. Manufacturing is completely different experience. One, you’ve got to have the technical expertise, hire the right kind of people with the require competence and all that. But what I consider the major challenge is what I have stated before, inconsistencies in government policies and added to that is lack of support from the authorities. We are not given any support, particularly in terms of infrastructure. We are powering our businesses, providing everything all by ourselves. It is really a challenging environment. What is your opinion on how the nation’s economy can be helped? I must say that one of the problems our economy is having has to do with lack of consistency in government policies. And this has ruined a lot of businesses. Up till now, I don’t think they have realised the harm they are causing to the businesses, particularly manufacturing. What we have often seen is a situation where government will encourage people to set up industries, and after people have done so, government will turn around and say they are on their own. It is like the Biblical saying that ‘you worship me with your mouth but your heart is very far from me.’ It is not so in other places. Other countries support their industries with various forms of subsidies. Here there are no proper interactions between policy makers in government and players in the private sector. For government policies to impact the economy there must be interactions. Encourage people to voice out their opinions at the time policies are being prepared. In the British system, there is usually regular interaction between those who make policies for government and those who operate in private sector. Now, my advice is if government can be a bit more stable in their policy application, one, they have to think through the policy, and once a policy has been implemented, they should give it time to work. Changing policies too frequently without allowing them to take root destabilises a whole lot of things in the system. What in your views are the problems with the youth nowadays? I think each generation has its own peculiar challenges and I am sure that once they recognise their own challenges they should be able to develop their own strategies to deal with the challenges. Can you point to any challenge you think the youths are facing? They all complain that they haven’t got jobs, they haven’t got the resources. But they have to sit down to identify the needs of people around and once they identify what such needs are, they begin to seek solutions to such needs. You’ll be amazed at the number of things that can be done if only we apply our minds to it. We cannot and must not continue to moan that we haven’t got job. Who are some of your role models? There are quite a number. Cyprian Ekwensi who was my classmate; Majokudunmi who was on the board of Barclays Bank with me; Akintola Williams, Chris Ogubanjo, Pius Okigbo, Ciroma, and Dagash. These are the people I had been relating with. Phillip Asiodu, though younger than I am, he’s always quite understanding. I am also very lucky to have siblings who are on their own very, very responsible. In the area of insecurity in the country; for instance, the abducted Chibok girls have been in captivity for over 100 days now; how do you feel as a Nigerian father and grandfather? It is a sad commentary for the whole country. Everybody is sad about it. It shows we do not have or employ the right conflict resolution facility to deal with it. We should accept the fact that this is not something to solve through military efforts, but we need negotiating skills to be able to talk to the other side so that they can share their own views also. Every country today invests in studying the other people, the other countries. In Britain, they have institutes where they study Russian history so that if anything happens they’ll know how to deal with Russia. In Russia too, they’ll have institute for American studies they too want to know how the Americans think or behave so that in times of crisis and conflicts they’ll know how to approach them. We seem to have missed out on these things.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 00:35:53 +0000
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